


Playing warden to your soul

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [52]
Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:54:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: Just two guys hanging out, talking about stuff.
Series: The Roadhouse Blues [52]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1069713
Kudos: 1





	Playing warden to your soul

Sonny was taking a shower, which was a good thing since Vinnie couldn’t punch him while he was in the shower. And Vinnie had been thinking, off and on all day, about punching him because Sonny had spent the day needling him, being as deliberately annoying as he could. They’d had three stupid arguments, all of them started by Sonny for no reason whatsoever. Well, no reason except that sometimes Sonny liked to argue with him.

Sonny had laughed when Vinnie said he was going to punch him in the face, he’d laughed and said he was going to take a shower, and maybe Vinnie could punch him later. He said it as though he was doing Vinnie a favor, the way you'd tell a kid maybe you'd buy him an ice cream cone later, which just made Vinnie want to hit him all the more.

Instead he was going through Sonny’s wallet. He’d been doing that for years now, usually when Sonny was in the shower, since that was when his wallet wasn’t in his possession, and Vinnie wasn’t likely to get caught.

Still with the lots of cash, because Sonny liked carrying lots of cash. A California driver’s license, three credit cards, a voter’s registration card—Sonny voted, which seemed either really weird or exactly right, Vinnie couldn’t figure out which. The same pictures that had been there the first time Vinnie had done this, though it was a new wallet; the same matchbook with a note that Vinnie was now positive had been written by Theresa Baglia. Besides all that, there was a motor club membership card, a receipt from the restaurant they'd had dinner at the night before, a business card from the same restaurant, a receipt from a store Vinnie didn't recognize the name of—

"Hey." Sonny was standing in the doorway, a towel half-heartedly slung around his waist. He was watching Vinnie.

—and five library cards. _Five library cards?_

"What're you doing?" Sonny asked. 

There'd been a time when Vinnie would have made up something, that he'd ordered a pizza and needed cash to pay the delivery guy, that he wanted to call that restaurant, to make reservations, and he knew Sonny had their card, that he'd heard a tiny voice coming from Sonny's wallet, crying, "Help me! Please! I'm trapped in here!" and had been trying to rescue the tiny person stuck in one of the credit card slots—

Those days were past. Instead of answering Sonny, Vinnie asked, "Why do you have five library cards?"

Sonny shrugged. The towel threatened to fall on the floor, but for some reason stayed put. "They make you sign up for one before you take out their books. What are you doing with my wallet?"

Sonny had answered his question. He'd pressed his own, of course, but he'd answered Vinnie's question, sort of. That was weird. What was weirder was, he didn't even seem pissed off, just curious. Apparently, going through Sonny's wallet wasn't as dangerous as Vinnie had always thought. That was kind of disappointing.

Which was why Vinnie answered, indifferently, "Looking for stuff. Trying to figure out who you are."

"Oh, great, now you don't know who I am. Am I still dead? Some dead stranger you're living with?"

Sonny didn't sound mad. He didn't even sound upset, he sounded amused, and he was smiling, but he also looked a little puzzled.

Vinnie laughed. "I know who you are. But why do you have five library cards?"

"I told you—"

"No, you explained the principle of library cards, not why you, personally, have one—let alone five."

"They're from different places," Sonny said, rather indignantly, as though Vinnie had accused him of something.

"I can see that. Is it a secret? Do you have a library fetish? You're losing your towel," Vinnie said, watching as it finally slipped to the floor, and Sonny retrieved it. "Some librarian you go in and sing to?"

"Sing to?" Sonny asked, perplexed. "What are you talking about?"

"Come on, if you're getting a doctorate in something, or you've joined a book club, or you're planning on marrying Marian the Librarian, I think I have a right to know."

"You really gotta quit drinking so early in the day," was all Sonny said, and then he went back in the bathroom.

"I haven't been drinking," Vinnie said to the closed door, but he said it mildly. Sonny knew he hadn't been drinking.

Dodge City, Kansas; Devil's Lake, North Dakota; Deming, New Mexico; Bonner's Ferry, Idaho; Tacoma, Washington; and finally, San Francisco, California. They'd been in all those places more than a month. Not that that explained anything, but it was part of a pattern. Maybe it was a meaningless pattern, but it was still a pattern, and a pattern was where you started.

But the pattern wasn’t helping. Vinnie couldn't remember Sonny ever reading a book. Not once. Not a library book, not a book from any of the used bookstores he'd impatiently walked around in while Vinnie browsed, not a paperback from an airport gift store. Never. Vinnie had wondered when he'd first found Sonny had a library card, but finding he had a whole collection was very puzzling.

Sonny came out of the bathroom, this time without the towel. "Put my stuff back, will you?"

"You're acting odd," Vinnie said.

"I'm acting odd?" Sonny rolled his eyes, laughed a little. "You're going through my stuff and I'm acting odd."

"Yeah, you're not mad about it."

Sonny shrugged. He was looking in his closet, just staring at his suits.

"Do you need a new suit?" Vinnie asked.

"No, you want to go out to eat?"

Oh, he was trying to decide how dressed up to get.

"Yeah, sure. How come you're not mad at me?"

Sonny turned around, smiling at him. "Me? Get mad at you, baby? What for?"

"You're acting really odd," Vinnie said, and went in to take his own shower.

When Vinnie came out of the bathroom, Sonny had put everything back in his wallet. He was also dressed, wearing his favorite charcoal suit. Even if he hadn’t know Sonny was in a great mood, that suit would have told Vinnie so. Sonny’s clothes were an eerily accurate barometer of his mood.

And from what Sonny was wearing, Vinnie knew what clothes he should wear, if he didn’t want to start an argument.

The jeans and T-shirt he got out were not those clothes. But Sonny was watching him, not saying anything. So Vinnie asked, "What's with all the library cards?"

"I told you—"

"Yeah, you told me, except you didn't tell me anything. You gave me the run-around. You're good at that, you know."

"I was doing some reading," Sonny said. "Will you get dressed? We're gonna be late for dinner."

"Reading, huh? And here I thought you were going to the library for their martinis. What were you reading?" He ignored the part about being late for dinner. If Sonny had made reservations anyplace, he'd be trying to get him into a suit, and he wasn't, so there were no reservations. Not for nothing was Vinnie a former cop. He sat down to put on his jeans.

"Crazy people," Sonny said, a little unwillingly. Then, more forcefully, "I was reading about crazy people. There's a lot of books about them."

"Crazy people?" Vinnie asked. "What do you mean, crazy people?" He was zipping up, and the zipper went up too easy. His jeans were loose. Maybe in a month or two he'd be buying a smaller size.

Sonny spun his finger around next to his ear. "Yeah, crazy. You know, cuckoo for Cocoa-Puffs."

"I know what crazy means," Vinnie said, exasperated. "I wish you'd quit doing that."

"Why?" Sonny asked, sounding innocent as hell, but then he laughed. "It works, doesn't it?"

"You mean it irritates me? Yeah, it works great. What's with the books on crazy people?"

"Aren't you hungry?" Sonny asked, sounding really concerned. "Because they won't let you in this place, the way you're dressed. I don't want you to have to wait in the car while I eat dinner—"

"Crazy people. You were looking for tips, right? Lemme tell you, you don't need 'em, you're plenty crazy all on your own. Maybe I'm not going to dinner with you, maybe I'm going out by myself. I know a great hamburger joint."

Sonny was grinning at him. "Yeah? How great?"

So they went out for hamburgers. It wasn't until they walked in the door that Vinnie remembered that Sonny had been here before. It had been a night to remember, but not because of the hamburgers. Sonny didn't mention it.

This was probably the first time in the history of Moose's Diner that somebody had tipped Moose a hundred bucks. Of course, that hundred had gotten them the big booth in the back, and another hundred up front to their waitress got them fast, friendly service. Vinnie knew Sonny planned to close the place down, and he didn't want a grumpy, impatient waitress spoiling his good time.

"Did you think I was kidding?" Vinnie asked conversationally. Sonny had tried to start yet another argument, this one about the difference between police protection and the other kind of protection, the kind you did time for, if the police could make a case. Sonny's argument was that there was no difference. "When I said I was going to slug you? Because I'm liking the idea better and better."

Sonny grinned. "No, I know you're not kidding. You're probably going to have to, since it's the only way you've got to defend your position."

"Defend—I don't have to defend anything! You're just wrong!"

"That's a very well-reasoned argument. Were you on the debate team? Because I'm completely convinced now. You want some more onion rings?"

"Yeah, sure." And before Sonny could, Vinnie signaled to the waitress, told her to bring two more plates of onion rings. Except for the suit Sonny was wearing, this could have been them back in high school, or maybe just after, bullshitting the night away as they ate their way through the menu. Sonny had ordered all the sides when they got their burgers, and they'd agreed that the onion rings were by far the best. When Vinnie looked at him, Sonny was smiling at him like he was waiting for something.

"What?"

Sonny shook his head. "C'm'on, tell me, what's the difference is between being forced to pay the cops and being forced to pay protection?"

"You mean besides you won't get a baseball bat to the head if you don't pay your taxes—" Vinnie stopped himself.

Sonny shrugged. "Yeah, and if you don't pay your taxes, the government takes your stuff and locks you up. So just what's the difference?"

"The difference is, the government has the right to collect taxes—"

"Uh-huh, and the reason the government has that right is because they got the muscle to back it up."

Vinnie resisted the urged to hit him with one of the empty plates, then the waitress came and took the plates away. "The government's rights come from the people," he said tightly.

"Mm, yeah, sure," Sonny conceded. "To begin with. But the only rights we're talking about is might makes right. The government can take your stuff, lock you up—hell, they can send you off to fight in other countries, if you don't have enough power to stop 'em. You know the last time we were at war?" Before Vinnie could answer, Sonny said, "Nineteen forty-five. All those dead kids in Korea and Vietnam and everyplace else they've been sending 'em don't count because there was no declared war, just a little police action, or— Hell, I can't even remember what they called Vietnam. **What**?"

Vinnie was staring at him. It was a lot of the same stuff he'd been saying just before the big bang. "I never pictured you as a hippie. Do you still have your love beads?"

Sonny just laughed. "I never went that scene, didn't need to—"

"Need to?" Vinnie asked. He felt like he'd missed a turn. "What?"

Sonny snagged the last onion ring, bit into it, then dropped it and spit out the piece in his mouth.

"Poison?" Vinnie asked.

"Cold. Order some more." When Vinnie had signaled the waitress, Sonny went on, "To pick up girls."

"You want to use onion rings to pick up girls?" Vinnie asked, even more confused. "I hope you got a pocketful of breath mints."

"Not—no! I didn't need to go the hippie route to pick up girls. Idiot. Just order the onion rings." And to the waitress who had come to their table, "More onion rings. And more coffee."

"Strawberry shake," Vinnie said to the waitress. When she was gone, he said, "I admit, you don't look much like a flower child. But you sure talk one." If he kept it up, he could probably piss Sonny off really good.

Except Sonny didn't seem pissed off, he seemed amused. "I talk like someone who reads the papers, who knows what's going on in the world. Every crime you ever investigated—hell, every crime you ever even heard of, the government you work for has committed."

"Even granting that's true," Vinnie said, "so what? I mean, what's your point?"

Sonny looked surprised. "If they can do it, why can't I?"

"You mean besides that way lies anarchy?"

"You know, you worry about anarchy an awful lot," Sonny said.

"I wouldn't say I worry about it," Vinnie said. "I just don't want to live in a world filled with it."

"But what business does the government got telling me I can't the do same thing they're doing—while they're using my tax dollars to do it? How does that jive with your whole protect and serve gig?"

Sonny's argument had never made sense to Vinnie before. **This** made sense, this was so completely Sonny, it made Vinnie laugh.

"What about me?" Vinnie asked. "How do I fit into all of this?"

"You mean you being a cop?" Sonny asked. "I think you're crazy."

"Because I was a cop?"

"Yeah, well, because you really think you can make things work. You're not stupid, so you must be crazy. Things don't work, the system doesn't work, everything breaks or falls apart or gets screwed up."

"'The center will not hold,'" Vinnie quoted.

"Yeah, that," Sonny agreed. "And somebody's gonna make a profit on all that anarchy, so why shouldn't it be me?"

"'Go placidly amid the noise and waste, and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.'" Vinnie said, quoting something entirely different, and then he started laughing again.

"Yeah! Yeah, exactly. What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Vinnie said, then added something he wouldn't have dared say before. "You."

The waitress finally came back with their onion rings and Vinnie's shake. "What, did you have to go pick the strawberries yourself?" Sonny asked her, but he was smiling and she smiled back at him.

When she was gone, Vinnie said, "So, what's with the crazy people?"

Sonny shrugged. "What about them?"

Back to square one. Vinnie didn't raise his voice. "Why were you going to the library and reading about crazy people?"

The waitress came back and refilled their coffee cups. When she'd gone, Sonny said, "You really want to talk about this?" That didn't bode well. He wasn't just avoiding the conversation to be a pain in the ass, he really didn't want to talk about it. Or he really thought Vinnie didn't.

"Why do you think I keep asking you?"

"You keep asking because that's what you do," Sonny said in a moment of frightening perception. "You want answers to questions, even if the questions don't mean anything and the answers don't matter, you still want to know."

Which was maybe why Sonny liked to make it difficult for Vinnie to get answers—it was more fun that way. Vinnie kept that thought to himself.

"Yeah, but this answer matters," Vinnie said, and Sonny nodded, sipped his coffee, sipped some more. Then he put down his cup.

"I was reading about crazy people because I was living with one," Sonny said, very deliberately. "And since I couldn't exactly get Dr. Joyce Brothers on the phone and find out from her what I should do with you, I went to the library to see what they had to say."

 _I'm the crazy person,_ Vinnie thought, and he couldn't figure out how he felt. He thought about this very carefully, tiptoeing around it in his mind, edging closer, trying to imagine what Sonny was thinking. Nothing in his face told Vinnie anything. _I'm the crazy person. Well, it's not like I can deny it—deny that I'm **a** crazy person, anyway._ "What did you find out?" Vinnie asked. He stuck his finger through the hole in one of the onion rings and hooked it off the plate.

"There's lots of different kinds of crazy out there," Sonny said, and for some reason Vinnie saw that as an advertisement on the side of a bus, something for the local mental health clinic. There's lots of different kinds of crazy out there. Which one are you?

"Which one am I?" Vinnie asked, refusing to let himself laugh. _Dr. Steelgrave explains everything you always wanted to know about craziness, but were afraid to ask._ He picked up another onion ring, though he hadn't eaten the first one.

Sonny frowned. "I'm not sure. I was thinking maybe that post-traumatic thing, only the symptoms didn't seem right."

"What were the symptoms?" Vinnie asked, and bit into both onion rings at once.

"Insomnia. Flashbacks. Outbursts of violent behavior."

Vinnie started laughing. "Maybe you've got it," he suggested, and kept laughing.

Sonny was still frowning at him. "What're you talking about? I don't have any of that."

Vinnie shook his head. "Yeah, go on. So what do I have?"

"I guess you were depressed. I didn't know being depressed made you pissed off, I thought you just sat around crying all the time. Not that you haven't done plenty of that. Will you wipe your face? You've got onion juice all over."

Vinnie wiped his face. "I could have told you I was depressed."

"So why didn't you?" Sonny asked, and now he sounded annoyed.

Vinnie didn't really have an answer for that. The first thing he thought of was, _I didn't know you wanted to know,_ and that didn't make much sense. Instead he asked, "What were you going to do, once you had me diagnosed?"

Sonny looked surprised. "Just keep an eye on you, make sure you didn't hurt yourself." He took Vinnie's hand and turned it palm-up, so the pale scars on his wrist showed.

A million years ago, Vinnie wouldn't have done what he did next, but a million years was a long time, and things changed. He grabbed Sonny's hand—the one he'd used to show the scars on Vinnie's wrist, the one with the scars from the fusebox—and exposed the palm. "You're not the only one who worries," Vinnie said.

Sonny was shaking his head: denial, denial, denial.

"Crazy people," Vinnie said again. "Did you find anything in there that fits you?"

"You mean, about people who willingly live with crazy people?" Sonny asked.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I mean."

If Sonny heard his sarcasm, he ignored it. "I read about torture, too. That's got a lot to do with what's wrong with you."

Vinnie went cold, the way he always did whenever anyone talked about what they thought had happened in El Salvador. "I wasn't tortured. Once they had me, they never touched me. They never even talked to me."

Sonny was nodding. "Yeah, you told me. They threw you in a cell—could you tell what time it was?"

"No, they took my nice Rolex," Vinnie said. Sarcasm made the cold go away a little.

"No, I mean like daytime or nighttime."

Vinnie thought about it, though he didn't like to. "No, not really. I was underground."

"And did they feed you on a regular schedule?" Sonny persisted.

"No, I don't—I don't think so. Look, could we talk about something else?"

"Yeah, yeah, in just a second." Sonny put his hand over Vinnie's. "They did torture you," he said, very, very gently. "You said nobody talked to you. You didn't know what day it was, or whether it was day or night—it's like a form of sensory deprivation. There's lots of kinds of torture that don't sound like torture. Just making somebody stand for long periods of time is torture. Hell, just tying you up with your hands over your head can kill you. Suffocation. That's what crucifixion did."

"You read up on torture?" Vinnie asked. He couldn't quite follow this.

Sonny shrugged. "You kept saying they hadn't done anything to you, but you were way too fucked up for that to be true. So I read about some of the stuff the CIA did."

"You hate reading," Vinnie said.

"What are you talking about?" Sonny asked, surprised.

"Don't you?" Vinnie was feeling disoriented.

"Books can be useful," Sonny conceded. "Reference stuff. But I like my news fresh. Hey, what's that from, anyway?"

"What's **what** from?"

"The center won't hold. What's it from?"

Vinnie took a deep breath, thinking about it, but he couldn't remember anymore of the poem, except maybe something about a widening gyre. "It's Eliot. Maybe."

"Eliot who?" Sonny appropriated his milkshake, what was left of it, and slurped it up the straw.

"T. S. Eliot, only—I don't know. It's from some poem." Vinnie went over it in his mind, and it was such a relief to think about this and not that cell that existed in a constant state of twilight. All he could come up with was, "'Things fall apart, the center will not hold.' Maybe it's Yeats. I don't know. Do you really care?"

Sonny shrugged. "You should have found somebody smarter to cheat off of in English class."

"Now look!" Vinnie said, stopped, took a deep breath. "It was one time, some play I hadn't read, since I was sick the whole time we were studying it. So for one test—one test! Just one! I borrowed Mooch's test—"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. What did you get on the test?"

"A B, I think. B-plus, something like that. Why?"

"You cheated and you still only got a B? I told you you should've found somebody smarter to cheat off of."

"It was one stupid test!" As he was defending himself, something struck Vinnie. "And how the hell do you know about this anyway? The only person who ever knew was Mooch."

"Oh, didn't I mention it? He called me up one day and told me all about it." Sonny rolled his eyes. "How do you **think** I know about it, you told me."

"When was this?" Vinnie asked. Not that he didn't believe Sonny, if for no other reason than how else **would** he have known about it?

"Who the hell knows? We were driving west," Sonny said, which was like saying _we were on planet earth._ "You said you wanted to tell me this stuff in the interest of full disclosure." Sonny laughed at the words. "Then you spent a couple hours rambling about cheating on tests, and how you used to sneak out of your room when you were grounded—"

"It was **one** test," Vinnie said again.

"Yeah, whatever. Sounds to me like it's a good thing you wanted to be a cop, if you don't even know how to cheat right."

Vinnie took a deep breath, pushing past his irritation. It felt good to be irritated, it felt warm, but he wanted to know what Sonny's definition of "cheating right" meant. "Please," he said, "elucidate. What is 'cheating right'?"

Sonny laughed again, which Vinnie had known he would. "Yeah, I'll elucidate. Well, you don't cheat off a guy named Mooch. What kind of grade did you expect to get?"

Vinnie shook his head. "Finish telling me about cheating right."

"You find the smartest girl in class—she's easy to spot, she wears glasses and she's always carrying too many books—and you get her alone. Then you give her your prettiest smile—" Sonny reached over and pinched Vinnie's cheek "—and you tell her you need her help. No way is she going to turn **you** down."

"Was that your method?" Vinnie asked, but instead of answering him, Sonny just drank his coffee. "Look—in the interest of full disclosure—" and he waited while Sonny laughed, choking on his coffee. "I had the flu junior year, I was out of class for almost three weeks, and I missed reading this play, and the test on it. I didn't want to read the whole thing by myself, so I asked Mooch for his test, which had already been corrected. He got an A on it—oh, and for your information, Mooch's a lawyer now, Michael Cacciatore—"

"Oh, yeah?" Sonny asked. "I've heard of him. Not the kind'a guy you ought'a be hanging around with. He's a friend of yours?"

"Why not?" Vinnie asked, thought he was pretty sure he knew.

"Why not what?" Sonny asked, and before Vinnie could snap at him, he said, "Oh, why shouldn't you be friends with him? Are you kidding? The kind'a clients he has? Ricky Pinzolo?" Sonny shook his head. "And you're friends with him?"

Vinnie knew what he was getting at, but he ignored it. "He's a lawyer," he said patiently. "Lawyers defend everybody."

Sonny looked like he wanted to say something—and Vinnie was pretty sure he knew what—but he didn't. He just chuckled quietly to himself.

"Anyway, Ricky Pinzolo's dead."

"Really?" Sonny asked. "How'd I miss that one? What happened to him?"

"Somebody shot him," Vinnie said, not wanting to get into the details Frank had told him.

"Good. I never did like the guy. Hey, if Mooch got an A, how come you only got a B?"

"Because I didn't want Sister Agnes getting suspicious."

Sonny nodded at this. "I always knew you were smart."

Vinnie looked around the restaurant. They were the only two customers in the place. Then he looked at his watch: it was nearly midnight. Their waitress was sitting on one of the stools at the counter. "I think they're ready to close up," Vinnie said.

Sonny looked around. "Looks like it," he agreed, and got out his wallet. "You wanna go home, or you wanna go someplace else?" He looked at his watch. "Hey, it's still early, you wanna go bowling?"

"Bowling?" Vinnie asked, surprised. And he was about to say no, only—he did, kind of. "You don't think you're maybe a little over-dressed?"

Sonny looked down at his suit. "What, are you embarrassed to be seen with me?" he asked. "I'll lose the jacket and tie."

"No, I'm not embarrassed—"

"Then what's the problem?"

"No problem," Vinnie said. "No problem at all."


End file.
